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Industry consultant Tore Nordahl has written the first in a series of articles assessing the current state of various HD camera options and projecting where they are headed in the future. The article appears in the first edition of Nordahl’s free semi-monthly Nordahl HDTV report.

In his article “What is the future for HDCAM and DVCPRO-HD,” Nordahl reviews the histories and performance characteristics of the formats. He also analyzes their relative strengths and weaknesses.

According to the article, the Sony HDCAM camcorder to date has dominated HD acquisition “for the simple reason that HDCAM was the first.” HDCAM began shipping in 1998. Panasonic’s DVCPRO-HD, which did not ship until two years later, became popular in Hollywood because of its support for shooting with variable frame rates. “(The) DVCPRO-HD format (is) able to do over-crank and under-crank for slow-motion and fast-motion effects,” he wrote in the article.

Despite the fact that WRAL in Raleigh-Durham, NC, launched local HD newsgathering in the United States with “a large complement of DVCPRO-HD 1080i equipment,” the industry has been slow to “move into HD news,” he said.

Subsequent articles from Nordahl will examine HDV implementations from Canon, JVC and Sony, as well as Sony’s XDCAM HD and Panasonic's HVX200.